Female Empowerment - what does that even mean?

Women in AI community newsletter #6

Everyone talks about female empowerment and I assume we all agree we need more of it for women in tech. But what does that mean exactly and how do we get there?

Like success I think empowerment is something that ultimately needs to be defined on a personal level. Yet there are aspects of it that I think many would agree on. Here is what I think is a great universal list (inspired by Tara Mohr’s amazing book Playing Big):

• Feeling confident?
• Openly, frequently and boldly sharing your unique ideas, criticisms and questions
• Not being held back by the fear of criticism?
• Being able to trust your instincts
• Feeling that you are enough and that what you do is enough
• Following a chosen path that is meaningful and rewarding to you

Being and feeling empowered (outer vs. inner)

There are two sides to empowerment - being empowered and feeling empowered. The first aspect describes the outer circumstances or the environment you are in. For example, does your employer take measures to make women thrive in a male-dominated environment, initiatives like ensuring women are promoted proportionally (i.e. if there are 20 % of women in the company, about 20 % of promotions should go to women) or giving women access to career coaching or seminars on career planning and strategies, flexible working hours, equal pay etc.

The other aspect is feeling empowered. This is about your inner world, how do you feel about your abilities, your achievements and yourself in general? Put in one word: confidence. The one thing we all like to have more of. Why is this important? Because our inner realities shape our outer world. If you don’t think you deserve the promotion, you won’t ask for it, which makes it a lot less likely you’ll get it. Feeling empowered is not just crucial to our success but also to our wellbeing. Who enjoys life while constantly feeling inadequate, not enough, scared to speak up?

Outer

In her book ?Playing big“ Tara Mohr writes ?it’s simply not enough for institutions [or companies] created by men for men to open their doors to women. Much more needs to change - the norms, the practices, and the face of their leadership - to create a place where women can truly succeed“. YES! We need to redesign the system instead of just letting the other half of the population in. Another point that I wrote about in a previous edition of this newsletter : Female empowerment should not be about teaching women how to behave like men. Instead we need to empower women to work, lead and be in their own unique way, which means strengthening and appreciating a new leadership style that not only draws on masculine qualities like assertiveness, doing, logic, reason, analysis etc but gives more space to feminine qualities like empathy, creativity, flow, being, emotion.

Tara Mohr also writes: ?while highly qualified women with important ideas stood on the sidelines both because they weren’t listened to and because they didn’t feel those ideas were ready for prime time.“ This describes exactly what I saw play out for myself and many other women many times. And it brings me to the second, often neglected aspect of empowerment: feeling empowered.

Inner

Women in tech often suffer from feelings of inadequacy or imposter syndrome (which is a common phenomenon in male-dominated industries). They don’t have enough confidence in their abilities and tend to attribute their achievements to luck or the support of others. This leads to them being overly cautious - over-planning, over-preparing, trying to control everything and be perfect (this was definitely me in the beginning of my career). While it works for some time it’s not sustainable in the long-run. In addition, perfection prevents women from sharing valuable ideas or insights out of fear they are not perfect yet.?

Tara Mohr acknowledges that the long ?inequality of men and women has left an internal effect in us. Over generations, it shaped how we think of of ourselves and what we see as possible for our lives and work. It shaped our fears - fears of speaking up, of rocking the boat, of displeasing others. It caused women to develop a number of behaviors that enabled them to survive in environments where they had no legal, financial or political power - behaviors like conflict avoidance, self-censoring, people-pleasing, tentative speech and action“.?

I recognize myself in that. While I have managed to unlearn some of these behaviors to a certain degree through constant inner work (yoga, meditation, learning about personal growth), it definitely is a process in which I become better at reducing the power these ingrained behaviors have over me but it’s always still there - to some extent. Don’t underestimate the impact of this inner part to empowerment!

Let’s rethink empowerment?

?Power is taken, not given!“ is what Dr. Larysa Visengeriyeva , herself a woman in AI, leader of a Data and AI department at a consultancy and organizer of my favorite tech conference Women+ in Data and AI , said in her keynote at the festival last week (and yes it was rather a festival than a conference including a techno night at the end).?

So here are my suggestions how we take power instead of waiting to be given power (which hardly ever happens).

1. Outer
2. Inner

As I already mentioned my favorite tools of addressing the inner aspect of empowerment are: yoga, meditation, sound, breath, dancing, singing, learning about personal growth.

While learning about all these concepts is important, not feeling empowered is not a problem you can merely solve in your head. Feeling empowered is something you need to embody, so you need to include your body in the solution. As Tony Robbins always says: it all comes down your physiology, i.e. what you do with your body. So change your state by moving your body, for example dancing, jumping and putting your arms up.

And now go out there and empower yourself and support others in empowering themselves ??

??? If you want to know more about the inner part of empowerment, apply to work with me.

??? Also stay tuned for an empowerment bootcamp I’ll host in spring next year.

Apply here

Studies and stats ??

Often the discussion of making tech more diverse evolves around bringing more women into STEM. However, when it comes to brining more women into the tech industry, we also need to address the issue that the tech industry attracts a lot less STEM women than STEM men.

Only 23 % of women STEM majors end up in tech roles, compared with 44 % of men.

Source: McKinsey Study Women in tech: The best bet to solve Europe’s talent shortage published in January 2023

AI ??

Since RAG is the most popular way of leveraging LLMs at the moment, this month’s selection is all about RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation).

?Want to read the full newsletter including:

• AI resources
• wellbeing hack
• content and event recommendations? ?

?? Sign-up here:

https://verenas-newsletter-63558b.beehiiv.com

It will also come in a much nicer design ??